


Dormirò sol

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Don Carlos | Don Carlo - Verdi/du Locle/Méry
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Knifeplay, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Spanish court is a truly messed up place.  Where is this going?  Well, we know how it’s going to end.  But in the meantime, there is no reason not to have a little garden snogging and knife foreplay.  Takes place after Act II, Scene I, aka the big garden blow out with Eboli.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dormirò sol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



> I'm just now uploading this from LJ, where it's been since 2011. Originally written for speakmefair's birthday <3
> 
> Warnings: I am using “Opera Names” and I’m also using “Opera dialogue” so if they sound deranged… it’s because they are. Also there’s massive angsting and some mild violence, but Rio is into that. ;)

_Questo cor che sì t’amò_

_A te chuidere non so._

 

            Carlo’s trembling hand, clenched between both of his, the small packet of letters containing in it one’s life, another one’s condemnation, briefly held between them, all this plus the powerful beating of his own heart, was telling Rodrigo it was time to flee.  He let go of Carlo’s hand, and quickly making the letters disappear within the folds of his doublet, turned on his heels.  The sting of Carlo’s earlier words still burned, and he wanted to put as much space as possible between the two of them.

            “Rodrigo, wait,” quick steps behind him, followed by a grip on his arm, stopped Posa’s earnest escape.  “I’m sorry about… what I said, about you and the King.” Carlo’s face was so close to his now, his drooping eyelids hiding his embarrassed gaze.  “It’s just rumors… you see.”

            “It’s the truth,” Rodrigo blurted out and immediately regretted it, for his friend’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing a deeply pained look.

            He wasn’t planning on it to happen; he only wanted to talk to the King about Flanders.  The run of his fortune was already stupendous given Philip’s decision to confide his marital woes to him, and he neglected to see anything in that confession beyond the hand of Providence.  But only a few moments later, as he genuflected to place a chaste kiss on his King’s hand, he felt the soft touch of Philip’s fingers upon his hair, and heard that ominous warning, spoken with soft insistence, “Beware the Grand Inquisitor.”  Rodrigo lifted his eyes, his lips forming only that briefest question, “Sire?” and finding, so startlingly, the King’s eyes looking into his own with such longing, and the sudden press of Philip’s lips against his own.   _Beware the Grand Inquisitor_.  The mystery was explained, and he accepted it, again for Carlo, just as he had accepted everything else.

            Instinctively, Rodrigo’s hand clenched at the dagger, the same one that only minutes prior he had not hesitated to point at Princess Eboli’s breast in Carlo’s defense. 

            “My Rodrigo…”  Carlo’s arms were suddenly around him, pressing him into an embrace so desperately needed that Rodrigo had to remind himself to breathe.  “Then you have given yourself to him for Flanders?” the Prince whispered.

            “No, my Carlo,” Rodrigo whispered back, his lips barely grazing the tip of his childhood friend’s earlobe.  “I gave myself to him for  _you_.”  He tightened his grasp, terrified that this moment and this body in his arms would slip away.  “And Elisabetta,” he quickly added.  “For both of you.”

            “I’ve been such an idiot, Rodrigo!” the Prince tore himself away and covered his face with both his hands.

            “My Prince, come away, it isn’t safe for you to remain here.”  It was typical of Rodrigo to find himself in this position again.  Carlo, much like his father, had most peculiar timing when it came to emotional outbursts.  “Carlo,” he tugged at his friend’s sleeve, “Come… Eboli?  Danger?  Away?”  Posa had resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t quite done cleaning up this night’s mess.

            “Oh Rodrigo, how could I be such a fool...,” Carlo’s words were hanging in the cool air as Rodrigo began to forcibly pull him along the shaded garden path, away from the cursed fountain.  “I destroy everything that I touch,” the Infante’s soliloquy continued despite his friend’s abortive efforts to shush him along the way.  “I will be the cause of your death and her dishonor… I am the serpent in the grass… And Eboli… without trying, I have ruined her as well… It is _my_  breast you should have sunk your dagger in…”

            “Will you be  _quiet_ , you infuriating royal brat!”  Posa slammed his Prince against a tree, one of his hands pressing along the sinews of Carlo’s neck as if wanting to stifle the nascent sound before it ever made it out of his throat.

            “But I am not worthy of your friendship!”

            “No, perhaps you’re right.  Fortunately, I love you.”  He barely mouthed these last words and they escaped his lips so quickly, blending into the sounds of surrounding silence and the chirping of the crickets.

            “My Rodrigo…”

            “Carlo, I…”  Posa’s words were stolen by what he could only think of as the Judas Kiss, since with that one kiss, his entire fate had been sealed.  It was easy before, to convince himself that he served at the altar of a higher friendship, to be the King’s man while remaining the Infante’s brother.  But at that moment, Marquis de Posa, the King’s favourite, was being kissed by the King’s eldest son.   The tree leaves shook drops of dew into his face, but he willed his eyes to remain closed.

 

_Tu, che sol sei un uom_

_fra lo stuol uman,_

_ripongo il cor nella leal tua man!_

 

            Posa’s room was cold and dark, and he barely found his way towards it by palpating the stones of the narrow hidden corridor that also connected his chambers to those of the King.  He stood, without lighting any candles, before his small writing desk, contemplating whether there was any more obvious place to put the packet of papers in his possession, and, finally, with a shake of his head, hiding them between the wooden planks underneath his bed.

            “I thought I heard you return,” Posa heard from the secret passageway, as a flickering light filled the room, revealing the deep crimson of the King’s robe.

            “I apologize to have kept you waiting, Sire, if you were looking for me,” Rodrigo mumbled, trying to school his expression and mechanically taking a step backwards from the encroaching light, into the shadows of the bed canopy.

            “The King waits for no man,” Philip’s deep voice was steady, as was his step, as he traversed the room, putting his light on the same desk that a few moments earlier Posa had rejected as a hiding place for proof of his son’s betrayal.  Philip slowly drew his fingers across the leather upholstery of the desk.  “Nor woman.  No, the King,” Philip paused with his hands clenched behind his back and faced Posa, “The King takes what he wants, when he wants it, isn’t that so?”  Rodrigo swallowed but said nothing, never knowing quite what to expect when Philip was in one of his more melancholy moods.  “But it is not irrelevant to the King whether he is  _wanted_ ,” Philip rounded upon the other man, suddenly so close to his face that the heat of his breath almost scalded Posa’s senses.  “I  _wish_  to be wanted,” he whispered.

            “My Lord is always wanted,” Rodrigo whispered back, afraid that should he raise his voice its trembling notes might betray him.

            “Where were you tonight, Posa?”

            “The wine did not agree with me, Sire.  I went for a walk to clear my head.”

            “Don’t  _lie_  to me, Posa!  Don’t  _you_  also lie to me!”  The knife at his throat, materializing seemingly out of the ether, obscured by the wizard’s sleeve of his Sovereign’s robe, pressed against Posa’s skin with cold, menacing insistence.  Philip had only used the broad side of the blade, giving his favourite an indication of favor not entirely lost, and Posa took a tentative swallow, before bringing up his hand and wrapping it around Philip’s wrist.

            “If you believe me to be a liar, strike now, Sire,” Rodrigo’s voice was steady as he pressed the King’s hand closer to his throat.

            The blade twitched.

            “No… Not you… Not you, Rodrigo.”

            Posa heard the sound of the dagger hitting the stones, just as instead of feeling the sting of an anticipated incision, he felt lips and tongue brushing against the lines of his throat, the by-now-familiar feel of Philip’s beard scraping along the edges of his cheekbones, the insistent tugging of fingers at the roots of his hair. 

            “Not you.  You’re mine.  Mine.”  Philip repeated the word insistently, as if trying to burn it into Posa’s flesh with each press of his lips against the skin.  “Mine.  All mine.”

 

_L’error che v’imputai,_

_io – io stessa avea commesso!_

            A secret passageway could no longer be called “secret” if its existence was known to every hussy in the kingdom.  Philip halted, and held his light aloft at the entryway back to his chamber.

            “Madam,” he said, somberly.

            “I would speak with Your Majesty,” Eboli curtsied and lowered her head in a way far too obsequious to have been sincere in Philip’s opinion.

            “Now, Madam?”

            “Now, if it please you, Sire.  Unless your Majesty is otherwise occupied.”

            Rodrigo’s scent still lingered on his fingers as he shrugged and pushed opened the small wooden door.

            “At your service, Princess,” the King entered before her and placed his companion light at the head of his bed. 

The laces of her corset fell apart too easily, followed again too easily by the sinking of her supple body into his pillows.  Her sighs were too loud and her scent too florid, but she was there, and she had wanted him, and he would forego knowing the reasons why.

            When she was gone, the room felt cold again, the air filled with an effervescent sense of emptiness, like that hollow sucking in the pit of Philip’s stomach that always spoke to him of a chasm in his soul he could never fill.  He rang for the attendant.

            “In the morning, send for my confessor,” he said, and closed his eyes, waiting for the sleep that would evade him, as his sheets cooled.

 

 

 


End file.
